Room treatments do little to address modal problems in a small room. I tried. Minimal benefits. And do you really want to fill a small room with 10inch ugly looking panels?
LS50 has two big problems for me: box resonance which is very obvious coming from something better and the metal tweeter.
Which brings me to the don’t:
- steer clear of metal tweeters if you can, including Be. Had the Magico A10 (still have it actually, until a part exchange deal with materialise). You would think, with their closed box design and small footprint, that they should work. They don’t. Too bright. - I would also advise against ribbon in near field scenarios. They tend to overwhelm as well. Someone mentioned Dali. Dali are VERY bright and generally paired with Hegel etc to counteract that. Stay with the soft dome tweeters. - avoid big boxes and definitely don’t even think about stand-floors unless you are planning to listen at 40dB. They will quickly overload the room. -avoid three way, complex designs with extra tweeters, radiators etc. Most of these designs need ample distance to merge the output from their different drivers into a coherent whole. Keep it simple. A two way design should be more than enough at six feet. If you need extra bass, as someone suggested above, use a couple of dinky subwoofers, like the REL Zero. A couple is key to address the room modes which are going to be a big problem.
One last thing; have you thought about on wall or in wall? Such speakers would not dominate a small room and are designed to use the wall reinforcement. They would also give you a bit of extra distance from your listening position, which would potentially allow you to use something a little bigger and maybe a bit more powerful.
LS50 has two big problems for me: box resonance which is very obvious coming from something better and the metal tweeter.
Which brings me to the don’t:
- steer clear of metal tweeters if you can, including Be. Had the Magico A10 (still have it actually, until a part exchange deal with materialise). You would think, with their closed box design and small footprint, that they should work. They don’t. Too bright. - I would also advise against ribbon in near field scenarios. They tend to overwhelm as well. Someone mentioned Dali. Dali are VERY bright and generally paired with Hegel etc to counteract that. Stay with the soft dome tweeters. - avoid big boxes and definitely don’t even think about stand-floors unless you are planning to listen at 40dB. They will quickly overload the room. -avoid three way, complex designs with extra tweeters, radiators etc. Most of these designs need ample distance to merge the output from their different drivers into a coherent whole. Keep it simple. A two way design should be more than enough at six feet. If you need extra bass, as someone suggested above, use a couple of dinky subwoofers, like the REL Zero. A couple is key to address the room modes which are going to be a big problem.
One last thing; have you thought about on wall or in wall? Such speakers would not dominate a small room and are designed to use the wall reinforcement. They would also give you a bit of extra distance from your listening position, which would potentially allow you to use something a little bigger and maybe a bit more powerful.